


The Pull to Family

by AndyAstral



Series: There is Only Straw [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: No beta I'll die like a man, Past Child Abuse, Raven is filled with guilt and I love her as a character, Raven's semblance is also empathy, more character study then story i guess, on my feet or not at all, which is very ironic for her, yeets fic onto the internet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23636299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAstral/pseuds/AndyAstral
Summary: Raven can no longer feel her brother though her semblance. but she can still feel her daughter. Her rage, her anguish.Set in "There is Only Straw" chapter 8: Sobering. If Raven were to find her brother comatose.
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Raven Branwen
Series: There is Only Straw [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1631611
Comments: 8
Kudos: 79





	The Pull to Family

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two hours and it shows.
> 
> Context: This concerns events that happen in 'There Is Only Straw' chapters Bad Cop and Sobering and the little hints I’ve been giving about the twins childhood. I’m not exactly happy about this one but i’m taking a break from chapter 24.
> 
> It can be considered Canon or non canon.

Family Bonds

_So while this is poorly written, this is canon to straw for the most part. If i change my mind it will be removed from the stories._

Raven felt the severing of the tie between herself and her brother. She was no longer able to sense his emotions, nor teleport to him.

But her daughter. She felt her distress like a wave. She had to investigate. It had been a few months since the fight at Haven, she had made herself scarce, moved her tribe deeper into the Anima wilds and told them to lay low.

Then she went back to Tai. The talk they had when she had to make her way to her because he was the only bond she had left that was far away from Haven.

Vernal had been like family, and she had been killed. The bond severed and she had no way to get back to the tribe besides flying up back through the vault elevator.

And she didn’t want to face her brother again. The Bond tatters between them. The further away she got, the less she felt the tear, the less she felt his hate for her. She didn’t think it would hurt so much. She really was a coward, going back to the Man she abandon because she was scared of so many things.

He didn’t look impressed seeing her when he saw the Raven flew above him. But when she walked out of the woods, unable to mask her expression of a thousand emotions bubbling to the surface he dropped his watering can and ran to her.

Gods she hated how she her entire body wanted to be held. Tai was always good at figuring out when things were bad. She didn’t have to tell him how she was feeling for him to know what to do.

It was late at night when she felt the rage, it jolted her awake, and she looked to see if she disturbed Tai. They were only sharing the bed, they still had a way to go between them before either of them thought of having a relationship.

It was for comfort.

Yang used to let her emotions run wild, but she knew when the girl was hurt. She had felt the rip in her arm and she had screamed out, not understanding what just happened. She tore open a portal, barely thinking and followed the link once she had control of herself.

She turned up to the fall.

It was chaos. Grimm everywhere. People panicking.

Yang unconscious and on a stretcher, arm missing and stump bleeding through the bandages.

This was Salem’s work. She fled.

Yang was not just angry, she was burning with a white hot fury that Raven had never felt before.

Then it extinguished, and what Raven felt was grief, deep in her heart. She cried along with her daughter, not knowing the context, not knowing why. She hated her semblance at times, at least this part of it.

After what felt like an hour she knew that she couldn’t ignore it.

Yang was asleep, face on the bed, back crooked. She looked worn down. Raven’s portals had never disturbed her daughter while she slept, or else the girl would have noticed her visits.

She was in a hospital room, the lights off, but the machines beeping and giving light. Her heart dropped when she saw who was in the bed.

Her brother looked like he had been beaten within an inch of his life. Dark bruises, bandages that covered most of him. The machines hooked up to him told her a story she didn’t want to see. She pulled up the patient sheet at the end of his bed. Comatose. Seven days. Stable, but no signs of waking up.

Memories flooded her of them being so young in a home and town that hated her brother. It had been more then 30 years ago and she could still feel the burning hate in the red eyes of her father. He was indifferent to her, treating her more like a doll to be dressed up and shown off then ignored once they were home. He already had plans on marrying her off. The village had been very set into old ways that were still alive in parts of the world, but those parts were very few now, almost extinct.

Qrow took the blunt of their father’s anger, blamed for everything that went wrong. Thunderstorms, objects breaking... the failed harvest.

The night it happened Qrow had been dragged from their shared bed. There could only have been three men, but in her memories it felt like a dozen. Qrow was kicking and screaming, Raven tried, she tried so hard to stop them from taking him but she was less then half their size, beating her fists into their sides and one kicked her down and closed the door.

She threw herself at the door, it being locked from the outside, feeling her shoulder bruising up but didn’t care, she had to help her brother.

“Father! They took Qrow!” she yelled through the door.

“I know, little Raven.” He murmured back. “It’s best to forget the omen, he won’t be bothering us anymore.”

She had screamed that if it had been Qrow’s fault, then the harvest the year before would have been ruined, and the one before that. But no one would listen to a little girl. They needed someone to blame, so why not the child that was surrounded in bad luck, an omen that killed his own mother when he had been born.

Their village had been remote, and childbirth was always dangerous even with a qualified doctor and care. Their mother died after an infection set in.

Their father had let the farmers take Qrow to be killed in the field. The Omen shouldn’t be alive to live longer, that he should be sacrificed and the bad luck would leave them.

She wished, she prayed to whatever gods that would listen to her to let her out of this room so she could find her brother.

And in a blink, a red mass opened before her.

Without thinking she threw herself through it, feeling something pulling her towards it. Instinct, hope, believing her prayers had been answered.

She found herself in the fields. The dying crop around her. Locusts had flown in just as the harvest was about to begin, and they decimated the crop to nothing. Without the crop, the coming winter was going to be difficult.

People needed a scapegoat.

“He’ll be dead by the morning.” One said. She recognized him as a friend to her father. She was meant to eventually marry his son. She kept herself low and out of sight, the night time covering her even more. They carried torches as they walked. Qrow wasn’t with them.

They had beaten him. Grown men had taken their frustrations out on an eight year old child and they didn’t feel the least bit guilty about it. They had tied him to an old scarecrow’s stake and left him there. She untied him, seeing his injuries were blackening his skin, his face was covered in blood, and she assumed they had kicked him in the head as well.

She promised him that their father wasn’t going to hurt him again. They weren’t going back, because their father would just hand Qrow back over to the farmers. He would be dead by morning. If his injuries didn’t kill him, then the cold would, or the grimm.

She made another wish in her heart. They needed to find a new home, they needed to find shelter and safety.

She followed the pull in her chest. It lead her to Qrow, and she held him tight and kept him to her side. He moved with her, dragging his legs, but he still was alive, and he was straining in his movements.

“You should have left me.” He said to her, shivering and whimpering.

“I would never.” She told him.

And they walked for what felt like hours in the dark through the trees, Raven following the pull until she couldn’t walk any further and let them stop. It didn’t feel like it was getting any closer, and maybe she just lead them to their death.

“I’m sorry.” Qrow said through an eye closed from swelling. He was holding his side. She could see the dirty boot prints in his white sleep shirt. “This is my fault. I’m an omen, this is my fault.”

“It’s not. You’re not.”She insisted. “You would blame yourself for the hole in the moon if you could.”

“You’re going to die out here. You shouldn’t have come for me. You would have been okay.” He said. and he believed it with all his heart.

She pushed him and he squawked in pain. “I wasn’t going to let you die!” she said through tears.

They huddled together for warmth. It occurred to her they would both die out here, and a part of her was grateful that it was with her brother. His breathing was ragged, and growing weaker. She held onto him. If he survived until morning, if no grimm found them, they might have a chance. But her legs were freezing. She didn’t put any shoes on, and her nightgown wasn’t giving her much protection from the elements.

There was a rustle in the trees above, and she wanted to cry. It sounded big. It sounded like it could be a grimm. feeling her brother move to get up, he grabbed a stick from across from them, pushing himself against the tree.

AS beaten as he was, as broken down as he was, he was still going to fight. Why wouldn't she do the same? She grabbed the stick from him and stood, Qrow grabbing onto the end of her dress. It had ripped sometime when they were walking, getting snagged on a bush.

“Run, please!” He pleaded. "I can hold it off."

“No! I’m not leaving you!” She said, and held the stick out and yelled as she swung it as the figure came from above to land. She wasn’t going to leave him to die and if he they were going to die it would be together like it’s always been.

It caught the stick with a human hand. In the moonlight, Raven could see it was a woman. Ginger hair, clothes looking like they were sewn from rags and leaves, two tawny wings behind her that had made her look much bigger then she thought.

“Peeta! What did you find?” another woman’s voice said.

“Kids! I found kids!” She said over her shoulder. Raven took a step back, and was caught off guard by how the woman looked to them. Pity? She couldn’t recognize it. “Oh gods, what happened?”

The bond she felt was attached to this woman, she could feel the pull to her.

“Hello sweetie, my name is Peeta and I want to help you.” she cooed gently. Like what she imagined a mother would sound like. Qrow finally collapsed, and the woman took him into his arms and took them both somewhere safe.

And here her brother was again. She pressed her hand into his cheek.

“You’re a fighter, little brother.” She said softly, pressing her forehead into his own. He was cold, why was he allowed to be cold?

And the tear she had felt between them tugged, and repair and strengthen. She gasped, feeling numbness and bruises? Bruises so many bruises! Why does her stomach hurt so much? Her head throbbed.

He slowly opened his eyes, glazed, pale red eyes that looked right through her. But he smiled weakly.

“Hi, sis.” He said, mouthing the words more than speaking them. No hatred she expected if they were to meet again.

“Hey, bro.” She said softly, pressing his hair back out of his eyes.

“I think... we’re going to be okay.” He said, closing his eyes. “You got us somewhere safe.”

She stared at him. They always joked that as twins, they could read each other’s minds, they knew each other so well but he was talking about that night like he had heard her thoughts. Those had been his first words to her when he had stirred, seven days later and they were in the Branwen Tribe’s camp. It was the bond she just rekindled, it had to be.

He didn’t stir. She wondered if she just imagined that happen, that her brother didn’t just wake up from his coma to smile at her like she had done nothing wrong. She looked to her sleeping daughter. Vigilant by her brother’s side, a mess of blonde hair and a hand in her brother’s unbandage hand.

He had been more of a parent then she had ever been.

She... She didn’t deserve to be here. She already betrayed them. She wasn’t family anymore. She didn’t deserve them.

She had already broken her promise to Qrow to never leave him. She already abandon her daughter. She felt a pang in her heart when she tore the portal open back to Tai, and wished she wasn't a coward.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I’m running off the headcanon that Raven can feel if someone she’s bonded to is in danger or is hurt. Her falling out with Qrow severed their connection. She felt Yang’s emotional pain, and finds that her brother has been injured and due to his memory lapse, their bond had been rekindled because he doesn’t remember hating her.
> 
> Raven is feeling too much shame, and fled before she could find out what really happened other wise HOO BOY would Straw have been different, so it explains why she's not in the story, a retcon explanation for myself.
> 
> I'll get to the STRQ and BIGD Vital Festival story eventually I swear!


End file.
